


Halcyon

by dezagirl



Category: Homestuck
Genre: A.I. - Freeform, Conniving AI, Drama, Inspired by Cybervale, Plot Twists, mmm cybervale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2109123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dezagirl/pseuds/dezagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Egbert's a freshly graduated college student whose expertise is artificial intelligence (but whose actual expertise is in 'screwing things up', with a minor in 'goofing around'). When he gets recruited to deal with a perplexing AI on behalf of Squarewave heir Dave Strider and his absentee founder-brother, John thinks his job seems fairly easy. However, he's soon to be proven wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halcyon

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, look at all this crap.
> 
> Anyways, John makes a reference to 'the Veldt' in this story- a link below to the iconic short story. 
> 
> http://www.d.umn.edu/~csigler/PDF%20files/bradbury_veldt.pdf

Halcyon

* * *

 

 

John Egbert is five when he receives his own personal computer.

The back of the laptop shines a bright red. _Crockercorp_ is displayed, in bold typeface, on the front.

The small boy places his pudgy fingers on the screen and smears them across; his father stands next to him, watches without saying a word. The boy places his fingers on the keyboard, and then, after a moment, grasps the mouse with his hand. His father stands behind him and watches- John barely hears the thrum of his father's baritone voice, so enthralled is he with the electronic humming of the laptop, the sighing whir of its fan. Personal laptops were  _old school,_ and Crockercorp had much more advanced,  _invasive_ technology developed- however, John at five years old doesn't realize this, and all he feels is a sick whirling in his stomach, of excitement and gratitude.

Dad Crocker had gotten it, free, from Crockercorp- he was family, and the machine was surplus, besides, useless to all but the most dedicated of antique technology aficianados. John doesn't realize this. John doesn't care. He clicks on a browser and opens it; adware floats on the screen, and John can't read the words, but he can click the windows, and this is his first foray into electronics, not counting that speak-and-spell he'd had forever ago.

 

* * *

John Egbert is eight when he stops worrying about antique technology and jumps headfirst into immersive alternate reality. Dad Crocker (who John hasn't quite learned the actual name of yet- will he ever?) appeases him, but John mandates the terms- rather, the singular  _term._ No Crockercorp products. Ever.

John had learned quickly fiddling on his old laptop that Crockercorp was notorious for installing malware and spyware on each and every one of its computers; half of the laptop's memory had been bloated with useless programs and malicious .exes. John decides that simply won't do. How can he work when his computer's such a heap of viruses?

The  _Squarewave_ personal-reality-system- PRS- is John's gift from Dad. John examines the machine with a critical eye and is satisfied- it's a large, human-sized cylinder with glowing, gaudy lights. There's a computing device connected directly to the tube; John fiddles about on the keyboard.

John, at eight years old, is temporarily transported back to an even younger age, as he strokes the keys of the PRS. He remembers, vaguely, wandering around in his father's office (forbidden) and digging into his stash of pulp magazines. He remembers pushing his glasses up on his nose and staring, intently, at the stories; he remembers reading a story which depicted children in an alternate reality, strange children unfamiliar to him and not understandable.

John strokes the cylinder's glass. This will become his Veldt.

 

* * *

John is eleven, and he's long since shunned traditional use of the PRS ('immersive' reality, intended for use in video games) in favor of improving upon the PRS, in a sort of flight of fancy.

The PRS is decent, but it lacks features that John wants. The PRS can only simulate vision- the reality might look realistic enough, but it doesn't even attempt to touch upon the other senses. John writes articles and complains online, which is apparently a hobby which many other preteen boys enjoy. Only, instead of typing on forums about his kill-death ratio, he's typing on forums about the vexations of programming, a hobby which both interests and amuses his father in equal parts.

John believes that the only way to simulate reality is to use complex neuroscience. Mimicking a sense such as touch is near impossible, he believes, by trying to replicate each individual texture. John believes that, to truly make an immersive system, a programmer would have to trick the user's brain.

 

* * *

John manages to convince a fledgling medical technologies worker at his Dad's company (which is presently unknown to John) to lend him some electrodes. John manages to search around on the web and finagle himself a half-way working brain scanner in the PRS.

John feels like he's making pretty good progress until, 6 months in to being eleven, he sees a commercial on the television.  _PRS MACH 2- ENJOY AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE!_

The PRS MACH 2 simulates sight by direct stimulation to the brain via doses of electricity- John doesn't really understand a lot of the lingo, but that's what he's got so far. Apparently the MACH 2 can also stimulate the olfactory nerves, making the user smell things that aren't precisely there. The MACH 2 has an integrated touch system that involves wearing some sort of pressure sensitive gloves- John can't really remember the fine details, because it was about around that time that he started yelling angrily about _all the good ideas being taken already, Dad, blurgh!_

 

* * *

 

 

John is twelve when his Dad leaves for a year to work on a Crockercorp project. John doesn't really care why his father is leaving. All he knows is that the absence of his guardian leaves a hollow feeling in his chest.

His Nana comes to watch him, which is nice, he supposes. She spends much of her time knitting in the den, and for that he is secretly grateful.

He spends the beginning of his twelfth year fiddling with his PRS. He's managed to mimick most of the PRS 2's abilities by reading complex and often dangerous how-to guides on the web. John eventually abandons this pursuit, however, after one day when he prepares the PRS for use, only for an electrical malfunction to send sparks out of the not-in-use electrodes. The makeshift voltage meter John attached to the cylinder went insane; the electricity sent out had obviously been enough to seriously injure, if not kill, a grown man, much less a twelve year old boy.

John decides after that debacle that electricity and hands-on mechanical working isn't perhaps his strongest suit. What catches his eye next is a new line from Squarewave. The Sawtooth Intelligence Simulator seems your average program, until you realize that said program is intended to develop artifical intelligences.

SIS retails at approximately twelve thousand dollars and is stupidly hard to use. For the first time in John's life, he dips into his Crockercorp savings account (from what John figures, the company's donated a thousand dollars for each month of his life into this account) and purchases SIS.

He then receives the SIS software and promptly calls himself an idiot loudly. SIS requires a much more complex system than his own PRS-included computing device.

Twenty thousand dollars more and John's procured himself a state of the art computing device, coincidentally also produced by the Squarewave company. The acronym for the computing device is SMPT-  _ Systems Manager and Programming Techlab.  _ John feels like this is an idiotic name for a computing device, but feels even more idiotic when he is watching the news one day. John's been pronouncing the device's name as  _ simpet-  _ the anchor, blabbing about AIs, calls the computing device a  _ smuppet.  _ John watches a flame war erupt on his favorite forum over the proper naming of said computing device and eventually settles on just not calling it anything. It isn't as if he has any real-life friends even tentatively interested in programming, much less complex artifical intelligence-creating programs and their computational counterparts.

 

* * *

 

John is thirteen when his father returns from his project, looking more tired than he ever had before. The man wanders into the house, greets his son with a worn-down hug, and disappears into his room.

John watches as his father loses interest in his hobbies. The high-tech technology equipment gets shoved in the basement; his father refuses to use anything more advanced than an old, care-worn personal laptop. John's present for his thirteenth birthday comes a little late from his father; it's a cutesy robot whose functions are basically 'glorified PDA' and 'oversized flashdrive'. It's another creation from the _Squarwave_ company, and John names the robot Casey. It's metallic, gray casing covering its salamander-body. Adorable.

John decides to give it intelligence.

 

* * *

 

The next few years of John's life are a multicolored blur. John delves deeper into technology than he had ever imagined he would; his courseload in high school is crammed with classes all tangentially related to computing. Around age fifteen, John is transferred abruptly to _Crockercorp Technologies School_ \- it's a boarding school, and John finds himself missing his father badly. CTS is one of a handful of cutting-edge schools that Crockercorp's established as sort of tributaries to the main company's talent. There's a _Crockercorp Medical,_ a _Crockercorp Engineering_ (and there's a lot of overlap between these- John sometimes questions the naming conventions)...

John spends the portion of his life at CTS focusing utterly on his coursework. He gives up the appearance of being a normal high school student in favor of specializing. Every class he takes feeds into his newfound desire- John wants to be a tech guy. Not a computer guy, not some fixer-upper for antique computers or a two-bit hacker. John wants to be a technology guy. He wants to be _the_ technology guy.

John regrets his aspirations as soon as he is enrolled in his first biomechanical computational systems class, and, after roughly six weeks in the class, stops regretting his aspirations, and then, at exams time, immediately begins regretting his aspiration once more.

The road to his dreams is difficult and full of bad decisions, varying from _I should take a class in a practically defunct programming language_ to _I should totally ignore this stop sign and end up getting in a collision_ to the worst, which is _I should definitely order the small meal plan at CTS instead of the largest possible meal plan._ (The latter is, at least, easily rectifiable compared to the former two.)

John leaves CTS at age 18 and is immediately enrolled, to his surprise and slight dismay, in the largest Crockercorp school- this one is _the one_ , the big university to which all the other schools contribute their worthiest students. _Trident University_ bears the infamous sigil of Crockercorp, a fork (who are we kidding, a _trident-fork_ at the _least_ ) emblazoned in red on the front of said university. The architecture is all sweeping and graceful, yet deadly.

John's rather in-depth studies into alternate reality had somehow merged around his fourteenth year into a deep interest in artificial intelligence and other dangerous foolery. John's coursework at CTS had been naturally inclined towards AI Studies; that is why, when John is questioned at Trident University as to his intended major, he blurts out a tentative ' _Artifical Intelligence, minor in Alternate Reality_ '. As with most bad mistakes made in life accidentally, this mistake ends up sticking with John, and he leaves TU as one of its most promising alumni, and certainly one of the brightest in his chosen field.

 

* * *

 

 

A few months after his graduation from Trident University, John receives a letter from Squarewave, assigning him to _UNDISCLOSED JOB_ at _UNDISCLOSED LOCATION._ John's father is equal parts sympathetic and terrified. In the back of 22-year-old John's mind rests a memory from nearly ten years ago- he remembers his father leaving, abruptly, to travel to some untold place. And he remembers, just as abruptly, his father returning and being someone wholly different.

John has a choice in the matter, but really, he doesn't. John's always wanted to work at Squarewave- the alternative was Crockercorp, after all. The other part of it is this- if John rejects his first job offer, he doesn't know _if_ he'll get another one, much less _when_.

The letter he receives lists his departure as a week from receipt of the letter, if he chooses to accept. John hopes, at least, that his assignment won't be off-planet- the letter doesn't say _leave all of your valuables behind_ , as some of his other friends' had warned. His old programming buddy from CTS and later TU, Sollux Captor, had received one of those- he'd gotten swept up the day after graduation and plonked somewhere in space (or, as Sollux had described it, _help, i'm stuck in the deepest, most puckering butthole of space, and i can't get out, since, you know, unwilling conscript._ ) Well, thank God for small mercies.

John goes into his room. His room's still the room of a roughly thirteen-fourteen year old boy- after John had traveled to CTS, he hadn't exactly visited enough to warrant a change in furniture. John grabs everything in his room that he can and wrangles it into two suitcases patterned with spaceships.

Departure is, in a way, both more and less horrifying than John had expected. He's whisked off to a sterile looking airport and shipped to God knows where. John's expertise had never exactly been geography, but he at least knew he wasn't on a coast. Or was he? He'd seen a few bodies of water beneath the plane. Those were probably rivers. Maybe?

John touches down in some dusty, vaguely Midwestern place, and feels tired, and goes where the nice, dark-haired woman in the snazzy suit tells him to, and nearly collapses when he finally reaches his lodgings. It's a small house, nice, especially considering it's intended for the use of a single, twenty-something scientist conscript. The bed is nice. The kitchen is nice. It's nondescript, and that suits John well. He drops his luggage and falls onto the bed, dozing immediately.

 

* * *

 

The incessant beeping of John's handheld comms device wakes him.

He has over one hundred messages.

Half of them are from his father, however, and he ignores those in favor of reading the red text which floods his screen- red text probably means Crockercorp, and Crockercorp is bad. Maybe they're threatening him for accepting an offer from Squarewave? John thinks that they have some sort of weird capitalist deal worked out, but...

TG: right okay youre john

TG: well good news and bad news

TG: good news continental breakfast is in the company cafeteria

TG: were having bran flakes and reconstituted sausage as far as I can tell

TG: bad news is youre getting ready to start the most difficult job of your career

TG: greater men than you have died attempting to wrangle this beast

TG: by beast i mean perplexing and basically snotty artifical intelligence made by my bro

TG: and by greater i guess i mean men with more facial hair

TG: and im not going to defined died

TG: ive seen your company approved profile picture

TG: baby face man

TG: baby face

TG: some squarewave rep will be contacting you soon with your official job description if they havent yet

TG: congrats on not getting assigned to backwoods colony number five of the cannibalistic insectoid species

TG: im going to just assume thats an actual colony planet

TG: because that thought amuses me

TG: anyways

TG: my name is dave strider

TG: might recognize my last name

TG: founder of squarewave is my brother

TG: yes he is conspiciously absent from the building

John looks at the timestamp of the messages. They were sent roughly an hour ago; John's head swims with frenetic thoughts, and he decides to put off reading the rest in favor of standing up for a moment. He examines his bedroom, detachedly.

His sheets are nice, dark blue. The comforter looks handstitched, little flowers swirling on the top of the comforter in precise stitching. The pillows look decently large.

The carpet is plush between John's toes; he looks down, and it's a dark blue as well. The walls _might_ range anywhere from a sea-foam green to a sky blue- the lighting in the room seems off, and it's difficult to tell. John decides to put off the rest of the house for later, and turns his attention back to his comms device.

TG: lalonde will fill you in way better than i can

TG: since im not really involved in this

TG: besides you know

TG: being the de facto heir to squarewave

The front wall of John's bedroom lights up, a fluorescent aqua. So _that's_ why the lighting had seemed off- the walls were backlit, glowing electronic-bright.

A map, etched out in silver, shimmers into existence on the wall. _You are here_ is stenciled out in bright, metallic letters next to a pinprick. John examines the map. It seems he's housed on-site. The map blinks, once, and a notice appears next to the map, in bright orange.

_Report to debriefing ASAP._ A point on the map glows bright orange.

John looks down at his comms device, continuing to read.

TG: youve got lalonde and shell show you around

TG: youve also got lil sebastian

TG: lil seb

TG: hes basically a glorified flash drive i mean his os hasnt been updated for years

TG: the only thing that robots good for is storing embarrassing childhood memories for indefinite periods of time

TG: and by indefinite i mean eternal

TG: shits impossible to get rid of

TG: i guess hes also good at being adorable

TG: cause hes a robot bunny and all

The comms device's screen glows a vivid orange, mimicking the shade that was glowing next to the map on the wall. A miniature map appears on the comms device screen; John begins to follow the map, blindly, still scrolling through his chat box on the side. He pauses at his bedroom door, slips on a pair of sandals (blue-and-white PJs and flipflops aren't entirely professional clothes, but who cares? Sollux had always told him that appearance didn't matter for computer scientists, and even though that was utter crap, John was going to follow that belief.) and swings open said door.

TG: alright so lalondes the ai expert and shes probably gonna try to feed you a line of bull

TG: this is all im gonna let you know man

TG: mostly because

TG: its sort of all i know

TG: youre gonna be dealing with an ai here

TG: since thats

TG: you know

TG: your specialty or some shit

John had managed the bedroom doorknob fairly well, but manages to bump into the hallway door. John blindly reaches for the knob, still trying to read his messages, and manages. The walls in the kitchen are a nice, offwhite color. John's flipflops slap loudly against the kitchen tiles, which are almost precisely the same shade as the walls.

TG: his names hal

TG: or 'lil hal'

TG: yes the ai is literally named after a famous insane artificial intelligence

TG: even worse its named after something in a stanley kubrick movie

TG: literally no one saw this coming

John pushes the entrance door open blindly and kicks it shut behind him. He's fixated on his comms screen. He disregards the idea of locking the house's door- it's not his house, really, and he doesn't have a key- does he? No, he doesn't remember getting one.

The path leading from the entrance door (a charming offwhite- John is beginning to see a pattern) is paved concrete. John walks- the orange dot on the PDA blinks in time with his steps.

TG: he had an asimov level breakdown

TG: blah blah sentience blah blah crazy blah blah

TG: anyways so hal got his memory wiped after

TG: pisses hal off but what can he do right

John steps around a curve in the path. There are well kept gardens demarcating the path; he admires the greenery, for a moment, before continuing.

TG: anyways youre being brought in i guess to prevent it

TG: who knows man

TG: certainly not me

A building swims into John's vision- it's large, metal arches curving over daunting, steel edges. Modern. John stares down the path and starts towards it- the orange dot on his map approves, blinking harder as he approaches his destination.

TG: anyways by the time you read these messages ill probably already be in the main building anyway

TG: same with lalonde

TG: who knows if our friendly resident gardener and biomechanical engineering expert is around

TG: and hate to disappoint you but strider sr aint gonna be around due to his aforementioned disappearance

TG: alright stay sick or w/e

– turntechGodhead has ceased pestering ectoBiologist –

 

John reaches the building just as he finishes the messages.

He takes a breath, stares down at the concrete path beneath his feet, and reaches his hand out. His fingers wrap around the curved, metal knob, and he twists it.

 


End file.
